Diabolical women

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You don't generally see that kind of behavior in dentists. They're a little rough around the edges with high-pressure water drills during crown work, but dentists don't run roughshod over others with a Mercedes. However, Clara Harris, dentist, ran over her fellow dentist/husband three times with her Mercedes, thus ending his life and their LLC. She did solve her problem with his adultery, the goal of this upper-class road rage outside a Houston Hilton where Dr. Harris found Dr. Harris with his paramour, their receptionist.

Speaking on behalf of married women everywhere, I am grateful for the most clout we've had since Fatal Attraction. There's not a married man in America who is not looking seven ways for his wife's car when leaving hotel business meetings, even those with Rosie O'Donnell or Ellen.

Yeehaw! Houston is one tough town. It has given us Enron's collapse, Andrea Yates' murder of her five children, and the Clara Harris murder trial, complete with deceased Dr. Harris's parents testifying for Clara. They are either the world's most supportive in-laws or filled with resentment over root canals.

As tempting as it is to place causation with Houston's London Broil climate, bizarre behavior by women is not confined to Southeast Texas. We're into Lizzie Borden territory here.

Women have it all, the feminist goal foisted upon us by Betty Friedan, including a diabolical desperation among "career gals," who walk the edges of national-news-type implosion. Cherie Blair, wife of Britain's prime minister, and herself a renowned barrister, relies on a spiritualist who showers with her at #10 Downing Street so that Mrs. Blair can get the toxins scrubbed from her body. London breeches falling down.

A new novel, I Don't Know How She Does It, features Kate Reddy, mother, hedge-fund manager, and, daft. Kate, a having-it-all role model, handles international currency exchange rates and micromanage her children's diet: no chicken in restaurants because the chickens from whence it came might have been given antibiotics.
But, Kate is downright evil at work. To punish a fellow fund manager who has, feminists, avert your eyes, posted va-voom pictures on his computer, Ms. Reddy and her female colleagues hatch an elaborate plot to have him buy a worthless company, thereby costing him his job and his clients their funds. Nice babes!

Feminists have embraced and hailed this book, referring to its author, Allison Pearson, as the "Jane Austen of working women." They adore this fictional witch's retaliation and whining.

There's a feminist arm around Clara Harris, too. The brilliant PR strategy of Clara's handlers has been to portray the now-departed Dr. Harris as a boorish oaf who demanded that the lead-footed Clara lose some weight because she was "too big," while the airhead receptionist had a "perfect body." Poor Clara had put down a $5,000 deposit for breast enlargement and liposuction. A feminist enduring these surgeries is akin to an environmentalist driving an SUV. The Texas jury didn't buy this claptrap on a husband who was part of the vast slender hip conspiracy and deserved to die. Clara got 20 years.

In their drive for success on all fronts, women snap. Pressure does strange things to all genders. Manslaughter is the original crime of passion, created to allow lesser punishment for murders committed when a man found his wife in bed with another man. Finding one's husband coming out of the Hilton elevator, hand-in-hand with your employee, is fairly close to the classic crime. But running over the unfaithful spouse 3 times is brutality writ large. 50 mph thrice times over is not part of the exemption.

There are more nasty working women than nice. If I asked for a show of hands from readers who had trouble working for a female boss, the rustle raised hands against newspaper kicks up would generate a Kilowatt hour or two. Women under pressure have a mean streak that could make Attila the Hun blush.

In a new book on Carly Fiorina, the CEO of Hewlett-Packard, George Anders documents outgoing CEO Lew Platt's frustration with her, "She doesn't want to take any advice." Ms. Fiorina referred to Hewlett-Packard and Compaq, during secret merger discussions, as Heloise (HP) and Abelard (Compaq), lovers from French medieval literature. Abelard was castrated.

Having it all brings out the worst in women. Under pressure, they murder, plot, destruct, diabolically revenge, and bathe with spiritualists. Having it all is not all it's cracked up to be, so to speak. Interestingly, Kate quits hedging and moves to a home in the country for some time with the kids, a little peace and quite, and a husband free from the perils of burning rubber. A little less achievement could be the release valve for the post-feminist pressure-cooker. Having it all is driving women crazy.

JWR contributor Marianne M. Jennings is a professor of legal and ethical studies at Arizona State
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